A few introductory thoughts (scroll down for links to
travelogue pages):

This program starts in Saigon, which is a stream of
moving people, and progressed to the Mekong Delta, where hundreds of
channels are streams of moving barges, fishing boats, produce boats, house
boats, multi-purpose boats, prams, canoes, etc. It is definitely a
regions on the move. It wasn't until we moved north out of the delta
and broad adjacent plain that the intensity of energy and activity reduced
to what seemed more like "normal" -- of course that all depends upon what
you are used to.

While thieving Vietnam is interesting, it is the more bucolic Vietnam
that I thrived on.

On of the morals is that much of what Vietnam has to offer is not along
Highway 1 (the road the runs the length of the country from Hanoi to
Saigon, mostly on the coastal plains.) It is unfortunate (or
fortunate for those willing to break away) that so much of so many tour programs are concentrated
on Highway 1. But this did mean that we could spend a week traveling
without hardly seeing another tourist and seeing little that had been skewed for
tourism.

Perhaps it my generation, but prior to visiting Vietnam my strongest
images were from 1960s broadcasts of the war and Hollywood movies,
supplemented by additional images I conjured from the rhetoric of
politicians of the era. All those image need to evaporate -- there
is hardly ghost of it in contemporary Vietnam. The waste and litter of war
has been collected, rebuilt or overgrown. While the South Vietnamese and
American participation is almost invisible, the Viet Cong activities are
heavily marked by monuments and memorials, but seemed to be largely
ignored by the general public -- close to three-quarters of the population
wasn't alive at the end of the war.

I kept trying to figure out who the enemy was and what the war meant
but there was virtually nothing to substantiate it. We heard a few
stories about the imprisonment and re-education immediately after
unification, and there are the facts of atrocities on the rural
populations by both sides. The most lasting legacy of the war seems
to be the damage and destruction it caused to cultural and heritage sites, and environmental damage (with some associated health
issues.) But mostly, thirty years later people seemed to move around
at will, free-enterprise was thriving , foreigners are welcomed
unequivocally and there isn't a strong personality cult for the leaders --
often it is hard to tell what is "communist" about the country.
The
Vietnamese carry less baggage from the conflict than middle-aged and older
Americans. In the end, so much of Vietnam seems to be about smiles.

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